1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of data communications for personal computers (PCs), and in particular to a system for virus checking content to be downloaded to a network client.
2. Related Art
The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred data communications medium for a broad class of computer users ranging from private individuals to large multi-national corporations. Such users now routinely employ the Internet to access information, distribute information, correspond electronically, and even conduct personal conferencing. An ever-growing number of individuals, organizations and businesses have established a presence on the Internet through "Web pages" on the World-Wide Web ("the Web").
As the popularity of the Internet has grown, so too have concerns about breaches in system integrity, such as computer viruses, which may be introduced by data downloaded from the largely-unregulated network. Existing virus scanning utilities typically are installed on end-user systems, but this approach presents several disadvantages. First and foremost, infected files may still reach a user's system (for example, downloaded from the network or copied from an external storage device) without the user's knowledge. The infected data may reside undetected on the user's system for a long period of time (for example, until the next time the user does a complete system scan, which many users do no more frequently than weekly, if at all). In the meantime, the user may inadvertently pass the infected file to other users. In addition, users may forget to leave virus checking software running, thereby providing infected data with an opportunity to infiltrate their system. Even a user who is diligent about periodically scanning his or her system may not be entirely safe from viruses, since the virus checking software may be outdated (that is, lacking the latest known virus pattern files).
Many of the disadvantages of existing end-user virus checking approaches can be avoided by preventing infected files from ever being downloaded to an end-user's machine in the first place. Accordingly, there is a need for a virus checking system capable of efficiently scanning network content for viruses prior to downloading such content to end-users.